At Nuremberg little girls dressed in white used to go in procession through the town, carrying a small open coffin in which a doll was laid out in state, or sometimes only a stick dressed up, and with an apple to represent the head.
In most of these places the rhymes sung apply to the departure of winter and the advent of summer, such as the following:
“And now we have chased the Death away,
And brought in the summer so warm and gay—
The summer and the month of May.
We bring sweet flowers full many a one,
We bring the rays of the golden sun,
For the dreary Death at last is gone.”
Or else:
“Come all of you and do not tarry,